Nibiru, doubtless you’ve been made aware of this pseudoscientific, utterly preposterous, inane bullshit. For those who haven’t yet had the misfortune To encounter it, I shall present a brief summation.

http://www.crystalinks.com/nibiru.html

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa021102a.htm

Now, you can imagine the lengths to which this sort of thing has been taken with the 2012 crowd. In 2012, Nibiru will obliterate Earth when its orbit comes into conflict with ours, asteroids and destruction will reign down from the planet of our progenitors. And then, unexpectedly, Jesus will fly down on a chariot “made of chocolate feathers,” …

In truth it does no good to dispute these claims, because those who make them are certain, they KNOW the truth of their statements, they have Zecharia Sitchin!!!

Kind of like the scientologists have L. Ron Hubbard, or the Heaven’s Gate cult had Marshall Applewhite, People’s temple had Jim Jones, Well, perhaps it’s a bit unfair to compare an “academic” to leaders of suicide cults. Nonetheless, the principle remains the same–blind faith in self-appointed leaders whose purpose is to provide a sense of the sacred after the end of Christianity’s stranglehold on civilization. This end was brought about by the enlightenment–which lead to its own problems, such as the domination of instrumental rationality–but that’s for another post. The point here is that with religion no longer a credible conception of the world, thanks to science and natural explanations for religious phenomena, people have to look elsewhere for their sense of mystery and mysticism. This all springs from a desire to place humanity above nature, to provide people with an impression of their own significance. We’re special!! We were created by aliens; they placed 20 percent of their genetic material in us!! Or, we’re saved, Jesus loves us, and he’s gonna take us with him when the world comes to its inevitable end as foretold by the bible! You know, the bible, with the talking snake, the man swallowed by the whale, or the children who mock Elisha and are subsequently torn to pieces by bears, the worldwide flood that archaeologists don’t believe ever occurred, … a paragon of verisimilitude if ever there was one.

It’s all so patently infantile.

Z

This is an excellent song that perfectly illustrates my philosophy of the idividual, as well as the gnostic knowledge that resides within us all. Enjoy!!

Z

The Ballad of Billy and Oscar

By

Jim Dickenson

I sing of the swift and mysterious style

Of Billy the swift and Oscar the wild,

Upstarts and outlaws and lords of the night

With destinys dark as their spirits were light.

Now Oscar the liar and Billy the thief

Subscribed to no orthodox code of belief

But they mastered each moment that passed like the wind

With the quicksilver motion of pistol or pen.

‘Cause when you’re as fresh as a flower

and quick as a snake….

And full of the power of the magic you make

Decisions just flow from you lighter than air

Crisp and seditious, vicious but fair,

Singin’ “stand and deliver right down to your boots

‘Cause I’m quick on the trigger and I brook no dispute

And I’ll take what I fancy and burn all the rest

And leave you like Adam in your innocence dressed.”

One grew from the seed of the Irish elite

One sprang like a weed through a crack in the street

But who’s to say which is more blessed or more cursed

The worst of the best or the best of the worst?

Cause in the great homes of Dublin and the Manhatten slum

In the heart of the child is the man he becomes

And the great Irish surgeon and the Manhatten whore

Got a highway to hell and run right by the door

Young Billy rode west on his dangerous team

Oscar come dressed like some outrageous queen

They could both tree a town, take the money and run

One wagging his pistol, the other his tongue,

‘Cause you keep movin’ on and you never look back

Livin’ out on your own there’s no sides of the track.

Cause you come and you’re gone with a price on your head

There are two kinds of outlaws,

The quick and the dead.

In the bloom days of Leadville goes the local vignette

Out lookin’ for love without guilt or regret

These veteran highwaymen met face to face

In the halls of a whorehouse for specialized tastes

And in a candlelit room full of envious eyes,

They shared them a meal and some excellent lies

With a black girl in buckskin and a Blackfoot in drag

For Billy the virgin and Oscar the fag.

And they dwelt upon matters of language and art

The relative size of their masculine parts

And the need to admit what you do in the dark

When you live by your wits and you shoot from your heart.

And you squander the treasure and you treasure the blame

And you take every pleasure to the threshold of pain

And you measure your freedom by the weight of your chain

And the terror and the wonder of the ultimate game

So, wasted on red eye and green appertif

And in total contempt for the Leadville police

They strolled down the block smokin’ French cigarettes

And then purchased an add in the Leadville Gazette.

An’ it was published on Sunday in a black bordered box

With headlines, “Attention All Critics and Cops”

Two desperate outlaws deserving the name

Seek one honest Christian with a comparable claim

And will gladly reward any upstanding man

Who does what he must and not just what he can

Who don’t need a heaven to live or to die

Or need to be threatened to reach for the sky

‘Cause they’ve come to discover that the wrong and the right

Define one another like the day and the night

That there’s none free and equal this side of the grave

And the good and the evil can be equally brave

But they waited in vain and gathering dusk

On the edge of the plain with their hearts filled with dust

From explaining to friends they knew better than trust

That the wages of fame was ashes and rust

That you set all you won against what you lost

The wonders ya’ done with the lovers it’s cost

It’s a rising expense on a descending curve

Towards the ultimate failure of muscle and nerve

Know there’s more to the journey

Than the distance traversed

And the price of the ticket comes out of the purse.

Still the end when it came seemed too well rehearsed

Though Oscar fell painfully, Billy fell first

And there followed this audible sigh of relief

From the bankers and lawyers and merchants of grief

Who could now pray on Sunday and prey on the week

Untroubled by outlaws with a moral critique

That’s all that remains of the bravest and best

Of these hell-bent and hardbitten sons of the west

And it shines undiminished right down to this day

As pure and unblemished as Dorian Gray.

But they never were victims of dishonest praise

Or the innocent symptoms of social malaise

They just did not believe and they did not belong

An’ they done evil deeds

Just because they were wrong.

Now Billy and Oscar, the wicked and dead,

Have rented this duplex inside of my head

And they’re back with a vengence

And takin’ down names

With the willing assistance of a fella who claims

If you think they were heroes then keep this in mind

‘Cause they hated your kin and they hated your kind

And they gave not a thought to the trust they betrayed

By the turn of a phrase or the thrust of a blade

Now assholes and bureaucrats, take my advice

You’d better walk clear and you’d better talk nice

‘Cause we’re hot on your trail

And we’re not on your side

You’d better forward your mail,

Shoot your wounded and ride

‘Cause when we got all you desk jockeys safe behind bars

We’ll claim some of the neon, and some of the cars,

Me and Billy and Oscar and some of the girls and guitars

Will be down in the gutter lookin’ up at the stars

Singin’ “Stand and deliver right down to your boots

‘Cause I’m quick on the trigger and I brook no disputes

And I’ll take what I fancy and burn all the rest

And leave you like Adam in your innocence dressed.”

Singin’ “Stand and deliver right down to your boots.

I’m quick on the trigger and I brook no disputes

And I’ll take what I fancy and burn all the rest

And leave you like Adam in your innocence dressed.”

This blog has been in the works for quite a while, but its final impetus–along with its titular inspiration–was the untimely death of one of America’s greatest cultural critics, George Carlin, whose relevance will continue as long as humanity is in existence. “Screaming for the Dead” will be an attempt
to give voice to all those who–despite finding their corporeal forms now employed in the field of decomposition–have a similar relevance, as well as those currently making their way toward the river Styx, whether by way of war, religion, or merely their own stupidity and the wonderful gift that is natural
selection. Discussions of politics, philosophy, religion, and the intersections therein, will be typical fare, in the hopes of initiating and facilitating a much needed discussion with the blogging public at large. To say that our politics will have an orientation to the left is similar to suggesting that the current administration has a slight penchant for mendaciousness. However, as Steven Colbert so aptly stated in his address to the Whitehouse Correspondence dinner, “reality has a strong liberal bias.” Nonetheless, all views will be heard and considered, provided the views are articulated with rational thought and not mere knee-jerk reactions to statements the author of said opinions finds offensive. In the case that they fall under the latter category, they will be ridiculed endlessly, in the hopes of both entertainment and enlightenment. The two primary authors, Mr Z and Mr H, each have their own unique voices, which will sometimes speak for themselves and at other times be combined into what may best be described as the bipolar bastard child of comedy, philosophy, and a general distaste for the world as a whole.

What follows is a eulogy for George Carlin, and a typical example of the content we plan to post.

George carlin as Social Theorist and philosopher King?
Z

It has now been one week since the death of comedian and cultural critic george carlin. Note the noun in the preceeding sentence, death. It has not been one week since his passing, expiration or terminal episode. He is, in fact, definitely disceesed; he is no more!! He’s bleedin’ demised! He has ceased to be!!! Bereft of life he rests in peace!! He is an ex-Carlin!!

I must insist on carrying on so vociforously if only to squelch some of the unfortunate tendencies noted in the numerous tributes to carlin that have cropped up . Not only have some of them used euphemisms such as passed on or passed away, but, for the most part, they have dealt with his earlier work, in particular the infamous seven words you can never say on television routine. While it is certainly not my desire to denigrate the humor and social relevance of this routine–which did, after all, spawn FCC vs Pacifica Foundation, which placed carlin in the annals of legal history and increased the regulatory power of the FCC–it is my contention that his later work has much more to offer in the way of relevance to a discussion of the human condition.

It is obvious that his oeuvre is a constant deconstruction of our dependence on language as truth,as Carlin once stated in an interview, “By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. If we could read each other’s minds, this would be a horror show. This stuff we call society would really be interesting. So we kind of shape our truths as we speak them. We fashion things to suit the occasion or the person or our own needs in the moment.” This position brings to mind Michel Foucault’s conceptions of power, language and truth. However, I believe, in Carlin’s latter years especially, he became a cultural critic whose bredth and insight is comparable only to Theodor Adorno. This is most notable in Life is worth Losing, his 2006 HBO special, in which Carlin transgressed the bounds of standup comic and attained the status of both a historian and philosopher. With what Nietzsche called “eyes to survey millennia,” Carlin laid bare humanities barbarism, reducing the humanistic hope of progress to something that could only be espoused by one obdurate to truth.

After an illucidation of what is refered to as “extreme human behavior,” Carlin explains, “Now in case you’re wondering why I have a certain fascination let’s call it, with torture and genecide, human sacrifice, nechrophilia–it’s because all these things go to show me but over and over and over, … what beasts, we humans really are, you know? When yuh get rahght down to it, when yuh get rahght down to it, … human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts, savages, no different from the Cro-magnon people 25000 years ago livin’ in the Pleistocene forests eatin’ grubs off of rotten logs. Our DNA hasn’t changed substantially in a hundred thousand years, we’re still operating out of the lower, reptilian brain, fight or flight kill or be killed, … Now, we like to think we’ve evolved and advanced, because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel under water, , we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera, but you know what? we’re barely out of the jungle on this planet, barely out of the fuckin’ jungle. what we are, is semicivilized  beasts, … with baseball caps and automatic weapons.” This conception of history as wrought with calamities perpetuated by human stagnation perceived as advancement brings to mind Walter Benjamin’s portrayal of the “angel of history.” IN HIS “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Benjamin uses a Paul Klee painting, Angelus Novus, as his point of departure for thesis number nine. “This is how one pictures the angel of history,” Benjamin writes. “His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

This storm of progress is what Carlin saw as the inevitable result of mankind’s hubris and excess, made most manifest in contemporary american consumerism, itself a product of a highly developed system of religious indoctrination. In the same interview, Carlin states, “… the belief that there’s a man in the sky watching us, watching everything we do, is so ingrained: First thing they do is tell you there’s an invisible man in the sky who’s going to march you down to a burning place if he doesn’t like you. If they can get you to believe that, it’s all over. Before you’re six years old, they’ve got you thinking that, they’ve got you forever on anything else they want. There’s no real education. It’s an indoctrination training little producers of goods who will also be consumers of goods. Some will be on the producer side, and more will be on the consumer side. But you’re all being trained to be a part of this big circle of goods being pumped out and everyone buying them and everyone going to work to help make more of them for other people to buy.” This is the new stage of capitalism, beyond Marx’s analysis of its industrial phase, this is what is now being dubbed “consumer capitalism,” in which it is the consumer, rather than the worker who upholds the upper class’s prophets. In fact, in this society, the worker and consumer have merged into a single entity, creating the circle of production and consumption described by carlin.

This critique might seem banal today. At present, academia is rife with books on the dangers of globalization and inordinate consumption. However, this is not carlin’s primary target. For Carlin, it is the human condition with  its propencity towards greed that has lead to our enslavement to the goods mentality. Our unhappiness is not merely due to the contemporary circumstances in which we find ourselves, but is rather an inevitable outcome that stems from human selfishness. Critics of consumer culture could never state such a truth without alienating the publications and publishers for which they write. Carlin, however, as an outsider, divorced from humanity, can calmly make such observations without fear of repercussions. With his ability to put all of life in a properly historical context, he can thus make the following astewt observation: “I’ve given up on the whole human species. I think a big, good-sized comet is exactly what this species needs. You know, the poor dinosaurs were walking around eating leaves, and they were completely wiped out. Let the insects have a go. You know, I don’t think they’ll come up with sneakers with lights in them, or Dust Busters, or Salad Shooters, or snot candy.”

For Plato, a philosopher was one who had emerged from the cave and seen the world as it truly was, in this case, the world of the forms, and was now charged with the obligation to enlighten those who still resided within the darkness of their world of shadows. Without adopting Platonic idealism, I believe it can be argued that george Carlin was one who had “seen the light,” and tried to infuse that knowledge within the culture in which he found himself. Unfortunately, when he was at his most brutally honest, he was rejected. Life is Worth Losing was often panned for its negativity, and carlin’s failure to provide his listeners with the usual jovial, sometimes silly, language games to which they had grown accustomed. while it is certainly true that his albums had grown progressively “darker”, particularly since 1992’s Jammin’ in New York, he had produced nothing that compared to the inescapability found in Life is Worth Losing. It is my hope that now, with his death, a greater appreciation can be cultivated for his penultimate gift to us. After all, one of the premisses of this blog is that the dead are the ones with the most valuable insights to offer.